A computer chassis is a casing of a computer for housing hardware components of the computer. There are usually multiple components that need to be fitted in the chassis. The components may be of different types, such as fan modules and hard-drives, or even different variants of a same type of component, such as air intake fan modules and air exit fan modules. The variants may be of the same dimension and have outer casings of the same configuration, as shown in FIG. 1, making it difficult to differentiate among variants of a component. The connectors of the respective variants may also have a same configuration 50 such that both can be plugged into a same designated connector on the chassis, as illustrated by FIGS. 2B and 2C. However, there may be serious consequences if a wrong variant of a component is installed. For example, if a wrong variant of a fan is fitted into a server computer, it may affect thermal management of the server computer, or even resulting in malfunction or shutdown of the server as a result of overheating of the server or thermal damages of other components of the server computer.
There are existing ways of differentiating the variants of a component (for example, fans) so as to guide a user to connect a correct variant to the computer chassis. As shown in FIG. 1, visual aids such as labels or pad prints 60 may be provided on the casing of the fans to indicate a variant of the fan module. Another way of differentiating the variants is by providing a handle at a different location of the respective fan casings, depending on the variant of the fan. This is illustrated by FIGS. 2A and 2B. The air exit fan (the one on the left in FIGS. 2A and 2B) is provided with a handle 70 which is located adjacent to the top surface of the casing of the fan when the fan is orientated in its normal working position. On the other hand, a handle 80 of the air intake fan (the one shown on the right in FIGS. 2A and 2B) is provided adjacent to the bottom surface of the casing. Visual aids such as an arrow indicating a direction of air flow and a text label corresponding to the fan variant are also provided on the fan casings.
However, existing solutions remain unsatisfactory as the user may still mix up the two variants and fit a wrong variant into the chassis. In other words, the wrong variant may be inadvertently connected to the chassis which causes potential damages of the computer. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a guide which facilitates connection of a correct variant or component to the computer chassis.